CARLSBAD  Agnieszka Radwanska was involved, so the tennis match wasn’t all that exciting.

The Polish woman doesn’t do exciting. For her, the more boring the better. Let others reach for the stunning, the electric, the out of the ordinary. Radwanska will go on hitting balls, over and over.

Her approach may have made Sunday at the La Costa Resort and Spa less entertaining than it might have been, but it was rewarding for Radwanska, a 6-3, 6-4 winner over Vera Zvonareva in the final of the Mercury Insurance Open.

“She played the way she usually does,” Zvonareva said. “She just didn’t make any unforced errors.”

Actually, she made 15, but Zvonareva, admittedly weary, made 28 in having a nine-match winning streak stopped. The Russian woman clearly had peaked during her conquest of Sabine Lisicki in the quarterfinals. In her next two tests, against Ana Ivanovic and Radwanska, she was nothing like the player she had been against Lisicki.

For Radwanska, this was her first tournament triumph in three years. She had not appeared in a final since last year’s Mercury (in which she lost to Svetlana Kuznetsova). By winning, she claimed a $111,000 purse, and her WTA Tour ranking, currently No. 13, will climb to No. 12 when the rankings are revised today.

In the quarterfinals here, Radwanska failed to win a game in the first set against Daniela Hantuchova. Radwanska was suffering from a shoulder injury. At that point. she would say later, she was considering retiring.

She played on. She got past Hantuchova 0-6, 6-4, 6-4 and in the semifinals bested a sometimes ill Andrea Petkovic 4-6, 6-0, 6-4.

“I was playing very well in the semis,” Radwanska said. “I just told myself, ‘I have to play the same tennis.’ I’m playing very good right now. I just hope I can go on playing like this, especially in the U.S. Open.”

The Mercury champion had some things in her favor at La Costa. The courts are somewhat slow, according to Radwanska, enabling her to run down almost everything. Additionally, Zvonareva is not the hardest of hitters.

The match closed painfully for Zvonareva. She fell heavily onto both knees during the final game, suffering an abrasion on one knee and what she said was a slight wrist injury.

Radwanska and Zvonareva are going on to a tournament in Toronto. Radwanska has a first-round match there against Elena Vesnina, Zvonareva a bye.

The women’s doubles team of Kveta Peschke-Katarina Srebotnik won a third consecutive tournament (and fifth of the season) by handling Abigail Spears, a former Valley Center resident, and partner Raquel Kops-Jones 6-0, 6-2.

They’re fit now

All the players who defected from the Mercury, citing injuries, are in the Toronto draw. They’re Svetlana Kuznetsova, Dominika Cibulkova, Petra Kvitova, Kim Clijsters and Maria Kirilenko.

A date in Dallas

CoCo Vandeweghe’s next scheduled appearance is at a $220,000 event in Dallas, beginning Aug. 22.

Vandeweghe was stopped in the third round at the Mercury, but she has the endorsement of one of the giants of the men’s game, Pancho Segura, 90. Said Pancho:

“She can become a worldbeater. Why not? Anybody who can serve that well. She’s moving better, by the way. She needs just a little consistency. She has beautiful ground strokes, but she overhits.”

Onto 2012

Next year being an Olympic year, the Mercury will be contested earlier, from July 16-22.